IN the hierarchy of literature there are some deities whose
altars are eternal, and whose worship is spread throughout all the nations of the earth. The greatest of these is Shakespeare. His fame needs no prophet, for it is "fixed and obvious as the sun in heaven " ; our incense and our offerings are nothing more than the superfluous ornaments of his power; as Mr. Swinburne says, "he exults not to be worshipped, but to be." Yet to praise him is a pleasant work of supererogation, and Mr. Hughes's collection, whose aim is to provide "a chronological sequence of the best pieces in verse and prose which the best writers in successive periods have written in praise of Shake- speare," is welcome on this account. The volume is, indeed, far better calculated to amuse than to instruct, in spite of some pretensions to scientific value, and a preface by Mr. Sidney Lee. At least one-half of the extracts are drawn from nineteenth-century writers, though the ostensible aim of Mr. Hughes is to show how fully Shakespeare's eminence was recog- nised, not by Mr. Dowclen or Mr. Massey, but by Shakespeare's own contemporaries and successors. This task, however, has been performed once and for all by Dr. Lngleby's valuable work, Shakespeare's Centurie of Prayse, which, revised and enlarged by Miss Toulmin Smith and Dr. Furnivall, completely exhausts the subject of seventeenth-century Shakespearian criticism. The forty octavo pages allotted by Mr. Hughes to the period which opens with the ingenuous flattery of Francis llileres, and closes with Sir Charles Sedley's polished approbation, make a scanty show beside the nine hundred quarto pages of Dr. Furnivall ; though even Mr. Hughes's limited selection is enough to dispel for ever the common fallacy that Shakespeare lived and died unhonoured. Nothing puts this error in a clearer light than the fact that of all the noble eulogies in this volume none is nobler, none more beautiful and more true, through the mingled force of admiration and of love, than the lines prefixed by Ben Jonson to the First Folio. Why Mr. Hughes has seen fit to omit from his collection the well-known passage in the Discoveries it is difficult to understand. It forms a fitting counterpart in prose to the verses in the Folio, and it sums up in a few intimate lines what could find no place in a public and formal encomium,—Jonson's one criti- cism of Shakespeare's work. "I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare that in his writing (whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out a line. My answer bath been, 'Would he had blotted a thousand.' " Such was Jonson's criticism, and it contains the essence of all the strictures of the classicists of later times, of Dryden, of Pope, and of the whole mass of eighteenth-century writers. That it is impossible to be an artist without taking pains is still the first article of belief among followers of Flaubert • The Praise of Shakespeare an lifItglish Anthology. Compiled by C. E. Htmium. With a Preface by Sidney Lee. London : Methuen and Co. [Si. ed../ and of Stevenson. It is this proposition which is, in fact, the fundamental fallacy of the classical doctrine. "If only Shakespeare had taken as much trouble as Pope," exclaim the apostles of that doctrine, "would not his writings have reached complete perfection ?" But it is legitimate to exclaim in reply : "How much the world would have been the gainer, if only Pope had taken as little trouble as Shake- speare! How many brilliant sallies have we lost, how many unstudied beauties have been obliterated, how many rugged splendours have been refined away for ever ! " The truth is that the genius of an artist shows itself as much in what he does not do as in what he does ; every step in the mysterious process of artistic production is guided by an inspiration which it is impossible to control ; and Pope, no leas than Shakespeare, "grew immortal in his own despite." Nor is the question one of quality alone ; even were it shown that the value of a work of art always increases in proportion to the labour bestowed upon it, it would still be necessary to consider whether this enhancement of quality is not counter- balanced by the diminution of quantity which it necessarily involves. Had Shakespeare " blotted " his lines as carefully as Ben Jonson wished, who knows how many precious months might have been absorbed in the process? And who would be willing to purchase a whole multitude of formal perfections, such as, let us say, the adjustment of the time-system in Othello, by the sacrifice of the character of Caliban or the songs of Ariel ?
The value of Mr. Hughes's collection would have been greatly increased if his scheme had allowed him to go some- what further afield in his choice of extracts. He has included in his anthology some careful sneers by Hume ; but if there is room for these in a volume dedicated to Shakespeare's praise, there seems to be no reason for having excluded from it every other example of orthodox eighteenth-century fault-finding. Nor can we help regretting the absence of a judicious selection from Continental critics, which might well have taken the place of a great number of the colourless and undiscriminating remarks culled from modern English and American writers that fill the end of the book. We hardly wish to be informed that "Shakespeare illustrates every phase and variety of humour " ; or that " he is ennobling as well as instructive " ; or to be asked : "Than Shakespeare and Petrarch pray who are more living P" Surely such pitiful flowers of literary small-talk might have been left to blush unseen.
That men of letters have never failed to recognise the genius of Shakespeare is, after all, a fact which is not stir- prising; it is only natural that fellow-workers should not be backward in giving the honour which is due to the master of their craft. But Shakespeare's genuine popularity, outside, so to speak, of his own profession, is a singular instance of his extraordinary power. He is, indeed, one of the very few artists of transcendent eminence whose work appeals to popular taste. Proof of this is not, of course, to be found in the present volume of literary extracts, but lies buried with the play-bills of thirty generations, and the obscure applause of unnumbered galleries and pits. Whether such capacity for moving the multitude is in itself evidence of some unique and admirable quality of greatness remains a doubtful question ; for if mere popularity is to be taken as the test of genius, the lowest comic opera must be reckoned superior to Hamlet. It seems clear, at any rate, that many of Shakespeare's most successful plays do owe their success to precisely those elements in their composition which they share with the most ephemeral trumpery of the hour. Strip Othello of its poetry and its psychology—of everything, in fact, whose appre- ciation demands education and refinement—and there still remains for the fascination of the vulgar a first-class melodrama of the most approved Adelphi pattern. There can be little doubt that Shakespeare deliberately adopted this method of making sure of his audience ; that this is the explanation of his constant use of old familiar themes which had already stood the test of time in plays, in stories, or in ballads before he laid his hands on them. It is impossible not to think that sometimes he over- stepped the mark ; The Merchant of Venice, for instance, is made up of the materials furnished by a couple of utterly childish fairy-stories eked out by an incredible disguise. In his greatest dramas, however, though the action is still
almost always simple, it is simple not from childishness but from elemental force. The situations upon which Lear and Hamlet and Othello and Macbeth are founded are situations which are clear and plain to all humanity. They do not depend, like the situation in the Antigone, upon the con- ditions imposed by a particular superstition existing at a particular time and place ; nor, like that in The Duchess of kfalfi, upon the twistings and turnings of a morbid intel- lectual state ; nor, like that in PIthdre, upon the elaborate convention of a highly civilised society. They take for granted nothing but the most fundamental feelings of mankind. Hottentots—if Hottentots recognise the ties of the family and the law of murder—could understand them as readily as Shakespeare himself.
Such are the foundations upon which the poet has built those dazzling and elaborate superstructures of imaginative psychology which soar upwards to the highest pinnacle of dramatic art. The contrast is complete between the sim- plicity of his situations and the subtilty of his characters. Who could have guessed that the puerilities of The Merchant of Venice would be the setting for that marvellous study of complex passions, guided by obscure and awful forces, which is embodied for us in the presentment of Shylock ? The method is repeated in nearly all his greatest works, until in King Lear we have his most elemental situation reflected to us in a thousand complications from the agonies of his profoundest mind. Yet it is clear that these sublime spiritual creations are little more than "caviare to the general"; for Antony and Cleopatra, in spite of the unsurpassed wealth of its characterisation, has never been a popular play. The reason is not far to seek ; the very essence of the situation lies in the vast involutions of the action, which create an impression of brilliant and universal complexity almost too amazing to follow. There is really nothing amid all this bewildering exuberance which can satisfy the craving of "the man in the street" for something which he can easily understand, and he has quietly relegated to an obscure corner of his Pantheon the play which ranks among the half-dozen most stupendous achievements of Shakespeare's genius.
But if "the man in the street" instinctively avoids what he cannot understand, the poet or the critic is as instinctively attracted by it ; and the mystery which, in spite of all our efforts, still hangs about so many of Shakespeare's characters is, perhaps, what brings us back to him more often even than the magic of his verse or the profundity of his thought. Such beings as Falstaff and Iago, as Hamlet and Cleopatra, are indeed perpetual problems upon which our deepest emotions s.nd our subtlest intellects seem to spend themselves in vain:— " We ask and ask ; thou smilest and art still, Out-topping Knowledge."
Nor does the inexplicable something which baffles us in these characters detract from their reality ; it is rather the final touch which projects them into life. By a process of which Shakespeare alone seems to be the master, he is able to pre- sent to us minds whose very contradictions convince us of their truth, so that they come to us, these persons of his imagination, with the vividness of the persons of real life, but heightened and beautified by all the resources of a marvel- lous art.
It is hard to refrain from speaking of Shakespeare, but it is, after all, a fruitless occupation. Most critics are like the guides in galleries and museums who point out the surround- ing beauties and deliver their little scraps of information in the best manner at their command. But a critic of Shake- speare is a far more impertinent person, for he is like some one who actually attempts to show off, with appropriate speeches and gestures, the wonders of Nature itself. Baedeker is out of place on the Alps, though he is too often found there ; and Mr. Hughes's volume has something of the same depressing effect. Perhaps Browning's words carry a truer message to this generation than any of his brother-poets' :— " Shakespeare ! To such name's sounding, what succeed Fitly as a silence ?"
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